Startup U. is an ongoing series that asks entrepreneurs and subject matter experts in the community to share their best business tips. The intent is to create a resource for new entrepreneurs, as well as those who might need a refresher. To contribute, email me at marcosantana77@gmail.com.
Lilian Myers, Starter Studio executive director, will lead her organization into a partnership with several others to host a pitch night. These events help young companies practice their pitch in front of actual audiences – though coronavirus might have something to say about that. She offered tips for businesses on what entrepreneurs should include in their pitches.
1. SIZE AND DYNAMICS OF YOUR MARKET
Your prospective investors want to know why they should care about the market you are after.
Is it big? Is it growing?
Are there dynamic changes that make THIS the moment to seize (think coronavirus)?
2. YOUR TARGET — USER AND WHY THEY CARE
Paint a quick picture of who your target customer is, why they aren’t being satisfied with the alternatives out there today, and what they are saying about what you do.
It’s all a never-ending customer discovery process you should start before you even get past the idea stage.
3. YOUR TEAM AND WHY YOU/THEY WILL PULL IT OFF
Use your history and credentials to establish yourselves as the ones to beat.
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But at least it’s going to be a pitch night, an event that helps young companies gain much-needed exposure.
Starter Studio has partnered with Project Orlando, the Orlando Economic Partnership and Spectrum for the first-ever drive-in pitch night.
“We racked our brains trying to figure out a creative way to do this,” Starter Studio executive director Lilian Myers said.
A pitch night is born
The pitch night will start in downtown Orlando at 7:30 p.m., Friday, Sept. 18, at The Vanguard, 578 N. Orange Ave. REGISTER HERE
The event will feature prerecorded pitches on a movie screen in the parking lot. It will be broadcast on a dedicated FM band.
A q-and-a session will follow each of the pitches, with those who attend able to send questions via text message.
The creative approach, of course, is an effort to navigate the coronavirus pandemic.
Myers said several organizations in the community had been hoping to come up with a way to help startups in the pandemic.
That’s where the drive-in idea materialized.
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After all, Starter Studio has in the past hosted its own pitch nights for companies in the space’s accelerator program.
Why feedback matters to startups
The feedback at these events can often help a young company refine its pitch, Myers said.
“It’s invaluable,” she said. “It’s also virtually impossible to do one by one when you can’t gather.”
Project Orlando organizer Devan Deratany said restarting a community staple like pitch nights is all about the entrepreneurs.
It’s important that these founders continue building relationships and showcasing their ideas, she said. “We wanted to offer a creative and safe environment to bring together the Orlando Tech community and honestly, just give everyone a break from the world of webinars.”
Coronavirus pandemic brought any gathering to a screeching halt in March.
Since then, startups have received feedback remotely, for the most part.
Myers said just hosting something like the Drive-In Pitch Night could be beneficial to the startups.
“The most important thing for them is to continue to tune the highest-level message to any ear,” she said. “We have to reimagine how this works.”
As Orlando’s tech ecosystem continues to assess how coronavirus will affect it long term, Myers said the core of the effort remains the same.
“We want to be more intentional about connections,” she said. “We are making these things happen in an entirely different way but it’s happening.”
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The Winter Springs data analytics company Datanautix’ website boldly asks business owners: “Ready to read your customers’ minds?”
Well, it doesn’t exactly work that way.
But the company’s AI product does give businesses data-based insight into customers that can help them optimize an experience.
The product has helped the company land clients like Red Lobster, University of Central Florida and Orlando International Airport.
In the first-ever OTN Sunday Chats, we spoke with Datanautix CEO Sanjay Patel. He shared how his company has been able to thrive in Orlando.
Q: How has Datanautix been able to land high-profile clients like Red Lobster and others?
We have been found large enterprise clients in the community to work with as we enhance our AI software. We are also focused on the solution we provide and the impact it has. This makes it easy for clients to do a pilot and determine business outcomes and potential return on investment. That ensures clients get more value than it costs them.
Q: Why has analytics seemed to be adopted in such a wide range of industries?
We are in the “customer experience” space. So virtually every industry struggles with how to keep on top of customer experience feedback. Companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook have trained consumers that reviews need to be 1: a rating on a 5 star scale and 2: an open-ended comment. This has led to a drop in response rates to the traditional 20-40 question surveys. Companies that care about customers experiences are also savvy enough to know that there are other sources of data and analytics that drive a deeper understanding of customer perceptions.
Q: Where does that leave analytics?
Analytics has become a “table stakes” dimension from a strategic perspective. Therefore, companies that can get a better understanding of their customers and do it faster have a huge advantage. We effectively enable that for clients and accomplish it at a relatively affordable price point.
Q: How has being in Central Florida helped Datanautix?
The Orlando area has been maturing over the last several years in terms of creating an environment in which tech entrepreneurs can succeed. The UCF Business Incubation program has helped us survive (and thrive) in spite of some of the economic challenges the region has gone through.
Q: UCF has helped you in other ways?
Our proximity to UCF has been valuable. We have informal advisors at the Rosen College of Hospitality Management that provide guidance and have also leveraged the internship programs to get some amazing computer science students.
Q: You recently landed your first international contract. Tell us about that.
The company is a global oil and gas firm in Paris with operations in over 20 countries that will use our AI technology. Eventually we will become their primary provider of stakeholder perception analytics on a global basis – the first round of pilots will be starting soon.
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Madden NFL 21 was the first in the storied game’s history to be built mostly remote.
The challenge of building one of the biggest franchises in video games had an unexpected twist this year.
The coronavirus pandemic pushed the team behind this year’s Madden NFL game home during the annual cycle’s most-crucial months.
In response, leaders called an audible.
“You have to become very flexible, figure out what works for everybody,” said Brandy Ingels, the Maitland-based development director on Madden. “Once we figured that out, we could see what we could get from the team. It took us resetting everything.”
Most complaints revolved around a lack of new features, despite the debut of “The Yard,” a backyard-style football mode that debuts this year.
However, in a press release Thursday, Electronic Arts reported that first-week sales of the game have outpaced last year’s title.
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Madden NFL 20 ended up as the most successful in franchise history, according to the release. Those numbers partially reflect a general increase in gaming as people stayed home more during the pandemic.
As they built the game, managers quickly learned how to work with their teams in a new setting, Engels said.
“It wasn’t everyone working 9 to 6, like usual,” Ingels said. “Some might get up and work from 4 to 10. We just had to learn how to work in this environment, figure out the new norm, then work around it.”
Madden’s historic run
Every year, gamers have high expectations of Madden.
The franchise debuted in 1988 as John Madden Football and has released an annual video game every years since 1990.
Madden NFL 21 trailer.
In 1993, it changed its name to Madden NFL, a moniker it has stuck with since then.
The Madden series has sold more than 130 million copies.
In 2016, the game was nominated for induction into the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s second class.
Two years later, it joined Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy VII as members of the 2018 class of the Rochester, N.Y.,-based facility.
“It’s one of the first game I ever bought with my own money,” said Producer JP Kellams, who led development of this year’s “The Yard” mode. “It’s surreal.”
“The Yard” is a create-a-player mode that allows gamers to customize a player, run them through pickup games and build their statistics up.
As he helped develop the mode, Kellams said a major challenge was tracking what his team was working on.
Instead of being able to pop his head over a partition in the Maitland office, for instance, he had to stay organized enough to receive constant updates from his team.
“The infrastructure that you had always relied on is no longer accessible,” he said. “So how do you build that new infrastructure and keep everyone safe while doing that?”
Pandemic’s effect on gaming
The pandemic was actually a blessing and a curse for video game companies like Electronic Arts.
While it forced teams to figure out how to work with a 100-percent remote team, it also forced more people to stay home, leading to record-setting sales numbers for both consoles and video games.
For Ingels, it meant more time at home, more time walking around the neighborhood, more time explaining to them what she did for a living.
“I never knew the amount of nerdy and geeky neighbors I had,” she said. “The amount of people buying their first console upgrade in a while has been crazy. It has opened up a lot of people to the idea of socializing through games.”
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The company will hire between 12 and 15 people in the next two years. It already employs about a dozen in multiple sites, including one in Canada.
Protean chose Lake Nona because of its strong presence in biotech, CEO Dr. Anthony Magliocco said in a news release.
“We looked around the state, and this was by far the best space to grow. Lake Nona’s medical city aligns with what we want to do now and into the future,” he said.
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Dr. Anthony Magliocco
They include medical lab techs, scientists and artificial intelligence experts.
“This is a company that will be on the forefront of Central Florida’s biosciences industry for years to come,” said Carol Ann Dykes Logue, a director of UCF’s business incubation program. “They have a great foundation with significant contracts to truly make a difference in people’s lives.”
Protean works with biotech and pharma companies on diagnostics and cancer screening tests.
The company hopes its tech will increase the availability of precision oncology treatments, or treatments specifically designed for a patient.
Presently, about 5-10 percent of cancer patients can access it, Magliocco said.
“Furthermore, managing all the new information about therapies and trials today is overwhelming for most oncologists, so we take that pressure off them to make recommendations for their patients.”
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Contributors to the campaign will be able to provide valuable feedback and, eventually, perhaps could see themselves make a cameo in the game as a character card.
Hoover, an independent game developer 10 years, heads Orlando Gamespace, a coworking space for video game companies near Lake Eola. He runs his own consulting business, 8-bit Agile Consulting, out of there.
When he graduated from Full Sail in 2010, his goal was common: to work at a big-name video game studio, namely the AAA studio Insomniac Games.
“I’ve never worked for a big company but I’ve done the grind,” he said. “The situations and environments (in the board game) are influenced by realistic situations.”
His work with Indienomicon helped him build Orlando’s budding video game community.
“I want to teach Full Sail grads and other students to understand that if you want to be in the industry, head to the independent route,” Hoover said. “Yes, it’s harder but not everyone gets that golden ticket.”
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COVID-19 causes a shift
Chad Hoover works in his Orlando Game Space office last month. He will soon launch a Kickstarter for a new board game. (Orlando Tech News)
Like most entrepreneurs, Hoover’s work took a hit when coronavirus struck early this year. But he managed to keep members of his coworking space involved as things quickly evolved.
The response impressed him.
“It blew me away,” he said. “We are hitting the reset button. COVID made us look at what we can fix. This thing is completely different from what was originally built.”
As he sets sail with his first Kickstarter campaign, Hoover said community buy-in will be important to get the project funded.
In addition, it will be a big part of making sure the game provides a dynamic experience for players.
“I’m going to need stories,” he said. “My experience can only take me so far.”
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Startup U. is an ongoing series that asks entrepreneurs and subject matter experts in the community to share their best business tips. The intent is to create a resource for new entrepreneurs, as well as those who might need a refresher. To contribute, email me at marcosantana77@gmail.com.
Lydia Chicles, Bold! Technologies CEO, PockitApp developer, recently landed a patent for her product, which converts physical coins into digital currency at a point of sale during a cash transaction. That could be helpful in the coronavirus aftermath. She offered some tips for those seeking a patent.
1. BECOME AN EXPERT TO BECOME AN INVENTOR
The biggest mistake we see most startups make is they rush to try to patent an idea without really understanding what they are getting into, or to solve a problem in an industry they don’t know.
It is important to have passion. However, fully knowing all aspects to a new technology or invention is absolutely necessary.
A successful inventor will learn everything they can about each aspect of the field, from the technology, to the business process, to the competition.
2. A PATENT ISN’T YOUR ONLY GOAL
Lydia Chicles
The goal is not to create technology or an invention that is unique.
The goal is not to simply get a patent.
Your goal should be almost always to monetize the invention.
The invention and patent are a means to an end.
Sometimes startup founders get so stuck on the creation aspect of inventing that they fail to stop and ask whether they should be investing the time, money and energy into the creation.
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3. LICENSE INVENTIONS, NOT IDEAS
You need a patent pending so that you may license your technology or invention.
When you seek to license an idea alone, you can easily scare companies.
In some cases, startups try to pitch their invention and listening to an idea without tangible boundaries as defined in at least a provisional patent application can scare companies.
They simply won’t want to do it.
The further you can develop your idea, the better and more valuable it will become.
UCF used simulation software to predict the check-in process, which resulted in an unheard of 97.3% satisfaction rate. – PHOTO SUBMITTED
UCF turned to simulation software to simplify what could have been a chaotic check-in when students returned to campus this month.
The results appear to have been a success. A survey distributed to students found 97.3 percent satisfied with the process.
Most students were in and out in between 18 and 22 minutes at a time when coronavirus introduced a new variable.
“It’s been a huge success,” project manager Lucrecia Krause said. “We want to give an example to the industry of how we can be creative. Simulation is not just for factories and Disney. It’s for things we do every day.”
The challenge was straightforward, even if the solution was not.
How do you get 6,000 students checked in over two weeks safely?
To accomplish that, a team created hypothetical scenarios, ran them through a simulator and tweaked several variables.
The team had about a month to develop the check-in procedures, which would be the first in the midst of a mass pandemic.
They created 15-minute windows for students to check in after researching other businesses, such as doctors offices.
For instance, the research uncovered that those sites typically give 2-hour windows for patients to arrive.
However, when that happens, most get to the office either at the start or end of the window.
“We didn’t want to put these students into something that was uncomfortable,” she said. “We needed to use data for decision making.”
That creates the kind of logjam UCF wanted to avoid.
The project included 80 people helping check students in and pathed students to two parking lots.
MORE BELOW
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One was for a COVID-19 test, the other distributed welcome packets.
Krause said seeing on the news that some food banks and other coronavirus testing lines took more than four hours was intimidating at first.
“We didn’t want to put these students into something that was uncomfortable,” she said. “We needed to use data for decision making.”
The simulations gave researchers the ability to adjust specific variables, such as which parking lots to stage at or where to direct students.
“For us, when we do simulation, we take into account where people are, how they are moving in,” said UCF assistant profess Adan Vela.
The computer model laid out where COVID testing stations might be, along with how many students would walk, drive or take an Uber to campus.
We will find that banking, hospitals, Disney, UCF will have to find their own new ways of how folks get service. Part of that is understanding outcomes when we have certain procedures in place.
Adan Vela, UCF
“At that point, we really didn’t know,” Krause said. “We had an estimate but we didn’t know who was coming and how they were going to get here.”
Central Florida has one of the more-robust simulation industries in the U.S., with companies in aviation, space and education contributing.
That could bode well in the future, as coronavirus will permanently change how things get done, Vela said.
“We will find that banking, hospitals, Disney, UCF will have to find their own new ways of how folks get service,” he said. “Part of that is understanding outcomes when we have certain procedures in place.”
Krause said the simulations were crucial to UCF not just reopening safely but also quickly.
“You don’t want to just hope for the best,” she said. “You want to simulate what it’s going to look like and will our process going to handle it? We want to fix things before they happen.”
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The highest-profile video game built in Central Florida returns for its 28th year on Friday.
The latest entry in Electronic Arts’ Madden NFL series, built in Maitland, will include a bonus for hardcore gamers.
Those who buy the game for Sony PS4 4 or Xbox One can automatically upgrade if they buy a next-generation console.
Both the Sony PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X will debut by the end of the year, according to the latest estimates.
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Madden’s production has been donein Central Florida since 1994 through the small development studio Tiburon Entertainment.
Electronic Arts acquired Tiburon in 1998.
Among the new features in Madden NFL 21:
A backyard-style, 6-on-6 mode called “The Yard” that allows user-created players to team with NFL pros.
New gameplay features, which are generally added each year to make the games more fluid.
A “Face of the Franchise” mode that allows you to take a created player from high school to the NFL. The cast in that mode will include Snoop Dogg and Rich Eisen.
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The lidar technology being developed by Luminar Technologies just landed it a merger. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)
The autonomous vehicle firm Luminar Technologies will merge with special purpose acquisition company Gores Metropoulos.
The company will trade on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol LAZR.
A press release that announced the deal placed its value at $3.4 billion.
“The milestone is pivotal not just for us, but also for the larger automotive industry,” CEO Austin Russell said.
Luminar’s story
Palo Alto, Calif.,-based Luminar Technologies employs more than 300, including about half in Central Florida.
Luminar’s system of self-driving software relies on lidar-based technology.
That is, a system that works like radar but uses light from a laser rather than radio waves.
Ever since it emerged from self-imposed stealth in 2017, the company has partnered with major automakers, including Volvo and Toyota.
In fact, Volvo plans to roll out Luminar technology in its entire catalog starting in 2022.
Fuller launched the company in 2012.
Luminar has since become one of the top firms building self-driving tech for consumer cars and trucks.
“Eight years ago, we took on a problem to which most thought there would be no technically or commercially viable solution,” he said. “We worked relentlessly to build the tech from the ground up to solve it and partnered directly with the leading global automakers to show the world what’s possible.”
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Gores Metropoulos
Gores Metropoulos has previously funded similar deals with companies like Hostess in 2016 and Vebra Mobility in 2018.
CEO Alec Gores said the company represented a chance for the investment group to jump into the autonomous vehicle industry.
“Luminar is well positioned to dominate the autonomous landscape and together, we look forward to shaping the future of automotive transportation,” he said in the release.
As part of the merger, a $170 million investment will be made directly into Luminar.
This part of the transaction will be led by investors like Gores, PayPal founder Peter Thiel, Volvo Cars Tech Fund and others.
The transaction will close in the fourth quarter of this year.
Luminar also announced that it had hired 16 people from Samsung’s self-driving software team.
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